Second Act Funk; National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month seems so easy for you. You crank out 50,000 words, 2,000 a day. and set it in Albuquerque. Your acting friends act out the scenes around town and post them on youtube. You should be famous by November 30, for sure....Until you hit the second act funk. Did Vince Gilligan have a second Act Funk while writing his pilot script for Breaking Bad?

I was in film school at AFI working on a student film. I took a nap on set over lunch. Apparently, I was talking in my sleep, uttering up nonsense words and random stage directions. One of the cameramen woke me, as it was my turn to hold the boom for the shoot. "You looked like you was in a second act funk," he said. He had been a stand-up bass player with a local jazz band, and he looked like the illegitimate son of Miles Davis...and director David Lynch.

"A second act funk?"

"You was trying to figure out what the hell to do with your second act of your script. It was like you were having a nightmare."

I was. Second Acts suck...

I don't know if he made up the term "second act funk," or whether it was originally a jazz term that had been adapted to film, but it sums up the problem of National Novel Writing Month. That ancient Greek hipster, Aristotle created the three act structure of film--beginning, middle and end. Perhaps he also came up with the second act funk while hanging with Plato in the jazz cave below the Acropolis. Beginnings are easy, Here's our main character, here he is in normal life in Kansas where we meet the characters who will be important later. At the end of Act II, we get the call to adventure.

Third Acts are easy as well, the main character has the final showdown with his antagonist and learns a valuable lesson like there's no place like home.

It'ts the second act that gets...well funky...And not in a Rick James "She's a very kinky girl" kinda funky...

In my own NaNoWriMo script, the mild mannered hero is a struggling lawyer who takes a case that goes bad in Albuquerque, and at the end of Act I, he's the prime suspect in an international espionage plot having something to do with the labs. In Act III, he goes to someplace exotic like Hawaii and confronts the femme fatale who set him up and learns the real reason for everything. He learns a valuable lesson as well, there's no place like home. In Act II, well it's so funky, it hasn't been outlined yet. Is the hero being chased, or is he the one doing the chasing? Does he have to go somewhere and do something? And if so, where does he have to go, what does he need to do and who is standing in his way?

Second Act Funk indeed...
Does Prince do script consulting?

To be continued....